How can you help as a birth partner?

How a Birth Partner Can Support Hypnobirthing

A birth partner is a crucial part of the hypnobirthing journey, offering love, strength, and support every step of the way. Here’s how you can make a difference during the big day:

Offer Comforting Touch: Gentle massage or hand-holding can help calm and reassure, providing comfort and a sense of safety.

Encourage Positive Affirmations: Using positive, calming words and affirmations that you have learnt and practiced together can help maintain focus and relaxation.

Help with Relaxation Techniques: Guide your partner through breathing exercises and relaxation techniques learned in hypnobirthing classes. Your calm presence can amplify the impact of these techniques!

Stay Present & Calm: Your ability to stay relaxed and composed will create a supportive atmosphere for both you and your partner. Hypnobirthing is all about minimizing fear and anxiety – and your peaceful energy is key!

Advocate for the Birth Plan: Being informed and supportive of the birth plan allows you to advocate for choices, ensuring the birth environment is aligned with your partner's wishes.

Remember: Your presence and involvement can make all the difference, helping your partner feel empowered, loved, and confident as they bring new life into the world, no matter how your baby decides to arrive.

Our four week courses are designed for both birthing Mum and birth partner, to give you BOTH a full set of skills and techniques to remain feeling calm and in control during your baby's birth. Check out our ‘Find a Teacher’ page to find classes near you.

Pregnancy sickness

Pregnancy and Sickness: Understanding the Challenges and Coping Strategies

Pregnancy is often described as a time of great joy and anticipation, but for many women, it can also be a time of physical discomfort. Morning sickness, which is typically associated with early pregnancy, affects many expectant mothers, and while it's usually temporary, it can be tough to handle. If you're going through this, you're not alone. Let’s explore pregnancy-related sickness, why it happens, and ways to cope with it, including how hypnobirthing techniques, like those offered by Calm Births, can support your journey.

What is Morning Sickness?

Despite the name, morning sickness doesn’t just happen in the morning—it can occur at any time of day and even last all day for some women. Morning sickness refers to nausea and vomiting that typically occurs in the first trimester of pregnancy. It is believed to be linked to hormonal changes that occur during pregnancy, particularly the increase in human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) and oestrogen levels.

While the exact cause isn't fully understood, several factors contribute to morning sickness, such as:

• Hormonal fluctuations: As pregnancy hormones surge, they can upset the stomach, leading to nausea.

• Increased sensitivity to smells: Pregnant women often experience heightened senses of smell, which can trigger nausea when exposed to certain odors.

• Changes in metabolism: The body is working harder to support a growing foetus, and this can affect digestion and cause stomach discomfort.

How Long Does Morning Sickness Last?

For most women, morning sickness peaks around the 9th week of pregnancy and gradually subsides by the 12th to 14th week. However, some women may experience it for a shorter period, while others may find it lasts longer, extending into the second trimester. A small number of women may even experience severe nausea and vomiting throughout their entire pregnancy, a condition known as hyperemesis gravidarum, which may require medical intervention.

Beyond Morning Sickness: Other Types of Pregnancy Sickness

While morning sickness is the most common form of pregnancy-related nausea and vomiting, other issues may arise during pregnancy that can also make women feel unwell:

• Heartburn and indigestion: As the uterus expands, it presses against the stomach, which can cause acid reflux and discomfort.

• Fatigue: Early pregnancy can leave you feeling exhausted, as your body adjusts to the changes required to support a growing baby.

• Headaches: Hormonal changes, dehydration, and stress can contribute to headaches during pregnancy.

• Dizziness: As blood volume increases, blood pressure can fluctuate, causing feelings of lightheadedness or dizziness.

Coping Strategies for Pregnancy Sickness

While pregnancy sickness can feel overwhelming, there are several ways to ease the discomfort and make it more manageable.

1. Eat Small, Frequent Meals

Instead of having three large meals, try eating small meals throughout the day. This can help keep blood sugar levels stable and prevent nausea. Focus on bland, easy-to-digest foods such as crackers, toast, or rice. Avoiding overly spicy or greasy foods can also help keep nausea at bay.

2. Stay Hydrated

Dehydration can worsen nausea and vomiting, so it’s important to drink plenty of water. Sipping on fluids throughout the day can be easier on your stomach than drinking large amounts at once. You might also try ginger tea or electrolyte drinks to stay hydrated and reduce nausea.

3. Get Fresh Air

Sometimes, a little fresh air is all it takes to alleviate nausea. A short walk outside or simply sitting by an open window can help. Some women find that a gentle breeze or being in nature can provide comfort during bouts of sickness.

4. Rest and Relax

Fatigue is a common side effect of pregnancy, and exhaustion can exacerbate nausea. Make sure to take naps and prioritize rest. Stress can also make symptoms worse, so try relaxation techniques like deep breathing or meditation to calm your mind and body.

One way to address stress is through hypnobirthing. This practice focuses on using relaxation and visualization techniques to promote calm and reduce anxiety during pregnancy and childbirth. Calm Births Hypnobirthing offers courses designed to guide you through pregnancy, helping you manage both physical discomfort and emotional stress. By learning to stay calm and centered, you can reduce the impact of pregnancy sickness on your overall experience.

5. Avoid Triggers

Certain smells, foods, or environments may trigger nausea. If you know there are specific things that set off your symptoms, try to avoid them as much as possible. This may involve asking others to avoid strong perfumes or cooking smells around you or adjusting your environment to make it more comfortable.

6. Consider Ginger and Vitamin B6

Some studies suggest that ginger may help alleviate nausea, so incorporating ginger tea, ginger chews, or ginger ale into your routine might provide some relief. Vitamin B6 supplements are another option that some pregnant women find helpful for managing morning sickness. Always check with your midwife before taking any supplements.

7. Seek Medical Help If Necessary

In some cases, morning sickness can become severe or even progress into hyperemesis gravidarum, a condition characterized by excessive vomiting and dehydration. If you find that you're unable to keep food or liquids down or are losing weight, it’s essential to contact your healthcare provider immediately. They may recommend prescription medication or other treatments to help manage your symptoms.

When to Call Your Doctor

While morning sickness is common and usually not a cause for concern, there are times when you should reach out to your doctor or midwife:

• Severe dehydration: If you’re unable to drink fluids or keep food down, or if you notice signs of dehydration (dry mouth, dark urine, dizziness), seek medical attention right away.

• Hyperemesis gravidarum: If vomiting is persistent, severe, and accompanied by weight loss, this may require medical intervention.

• Other unusual symptoms: If you experience fever, abdominal pain, or spotting in addition to your nausea and vomiting, consult your healthcare provider for a thorough evaluation.

Final Thoughts

Pregnancy-related sickness can be a challenging part of the pregnancy journey, but remember, it’s usually temporary. With the right self-care practices, support from your healthcare team, and a little patience, you’ll get through it. If you're struggling, consider incorporating relaxation and visualization techniques from Calm Births Hypnobirthing to help manage stress and discomfort. These tools can not only assist with sickness but also prepare you for the birth process ahead.

The most important thing is to listen to your body, take it easy when you need to, and remind yourself that this phase will pass—usually by the time you reach the second trimester. Until then, take it one day at a time and remember that it's all a part of bringing new life into the world.

Calm Births empowering families!

A word we use a LOT at Calm Births is empowerment.

One of our main drivers is to empower families to achieve positive, calm births. Our other goal and passion is to empower people to share their skillset and become amazing hypnobirthing teachers themselves, who can then in turn empower people in their own communities. It’s an amazing cycle!

The two processes are surprisingly not that different - with parents-to-be we are educating them in the process of birth, and giving them specific techniques that they can use in any situation where they feel anxious or out of control. We offer them support specific to their individual circumstances and hold their hand until they are holding their baby in their arms.

With teachers-to-be, with fully educate them in birth, hypnobirthing and antenatal education. We give them a specific syllabus to use that works, we give them specific tools that work to build a business and we hold their hand all the way along their journey to becoming successful in their new businesses.

In both areas, we are people’s cheerleaders, we’re giving them accurate, evidence based information and arming them with it, and holding their hands on their special journeys.

It’s what makes us tick and we love it!

To find a hypnobirthing teacher near you just look here. Or to learn more about becoming a hypnobirthing teacher look here x

Can I do hypnobirthing on my own?

This is a really commonly asked question - it may be that you have a serving partner in the military who will be away for the birth; you are going it alone and don’t plan to have a birth partner with you, or that you don’t feel that your birth partner is on board with hypnobirthing.

If you know that your birth partner is going to be away, or if you are planning to solo parent, it is still so valuable to have a birth partner with you on the day - this could be a friend, a sister, a Mum - just a friendly face to hold your hand.

I have taught lots of people over the years who, for varying reasons, have chosen to have such a birth partner and have brought them along to the classes with them so that they can understand the hypnobirthing techniques to support the birthing person.

However, if this is not an option for you, or your birth partner is not on board with learning the techniques then please don’t despair! Yes it is beneficial to have someone present who can support you in the techniques, but it is also possible to do it alone.

The idea behind hypnobirthing is that you train your mind to reach that deep state of relaxation (more about that here) in order that you can float through labour and whatever is happening on the day without feeling frightened, anxious or out of control. Yes having a birth partner helps this, as they will learn how to help you reach that state easily and quickly, but it is also possible, with lots of practice and guidance from your teacher, to learn how to get there yourself during labour.

Our teachers all develop beautifully supportive relationships with their clients, and are there for them all the way through until they can meet your baby afterwards! To find yours just click here.

Why pregnant people should NOT eat pineapple.

Ok, so that’s a bit of a sensationalist headline isn’t it?! But when you’re pregnant you are constantly bombarded with these messages of ‘you MUST do this’ or ‘whatever you do, DON’T do that!’ which can feel somewhat overwhelming and scary - who do you listen to?

This is why our course is carefully created from accurate, evidence based information, accredited by the Royal College of Midwives. But enough of that - what about the pineapple?

So there are many old wives tales about what you should and shouldn’t eat in pregnancy, and pineapple is often one that comes up.

It’s usually cited as something you should eat to help you go into labour, when I ask my clients which methods they have heard of for naturally inducing labour, pineapple, curry and sex are always top of the list.

Pineapple is thought to contain an enzyme called bromelain, which is known to stimulate the prostaglandins in the body which in turn soften the cervix. It is difficult to find any hard evidence on this, but it is widely believed that the bromelain is contained in the core of the pineapple, which needs to be fresh as the bromelain is lost in the canning process.

It is also widely believed that the levels of bromelain are low, meaning that you would need to eat approximately 7 fresh pineapple cores in order for it to work its magic!

So, it’s not looking great for pineapple to be a natural induction tool. However, what we ALSO know, is that in the last trimester of pregnancy, the bowel slows down a lot due to those pesky hormones - this can often lead to constipation and the awful haemorrhoids (piles) and so in fact eating lots of fresh fruit is really helpful for that.

In conclusion, if you really feel like eating 7 fresh pineapple cores there may just be a chance that it might soften your cervix a little, but it’s not going to do enough to warrant the awful indigestion and diarrhoea that will be involved in the process!

There are lots of other natural methods that we can use to safely help bring on labour, they are discussed in the Calm Births book here, or discussed on a course with any of our teachers.

Can you use hypnobirthing with induction of labour?

So a question I’m often asked is if hypnobirthing can still be used if you need to be induced. In a word? YES!!

In actual fact, in my humble opinion (formed after 10 years service as a Midwife, 6 as a Hypnobirthing teacher and being a Mum of three) hypnobirthing techniques are actually even more valuable in a birth where there is an induction, or indeed any other clinical intervention.

The reason I know this to be true is that the whole purpose of the Calm Births course is to provide birthing person and partner with the full set of knowledge and skills needed to know how to override feelings of fear, overwhelm or stress and replace them with calm, positive ones. Once we are able to do this, our body responds accordingly, making the process happen so much more easily.

In a birth where we might need intervention such as induction, it can feel like our birth is being taken out of our control, and that we are helpless in this situation. This is not how we envisage giving birth, or indeed how we want to feel during it. And so with our help, you will fully understand the process, and will hone your skills to flick that override switch at any time you need to, allowing you to sail through the process smoothly and positively.

Having written and taught this course since 2015, and now with 40+ teachers across the UK, our feedback in this scenario is consistent - you can read about two of our clients journeys here and here.

So in conclusion, YES! We know and can say, hand on heart, that hypnobirthing definitely does work for induction!

How does hypnobirthing work?

It’s the question that many ask, and it’s a good one, and here I will try to answer it! The very short answer is that Hypnobirthing (the way Calm Births teach it) is a full antenatal preparation course which includes hypnotherapy techniques to ensure that both birthing person and partner feel fully prepared, informed and excited about their baby’s arrival, and that the birth experience feels positive and calm no matter what happens on the day.

Essentially we know that if a person is anxious, fearful or worried about their birth experience, it has a profound physiological effect on the process - whether that is for a vaginal birth or a C-Section. So through a variety of different ways, we work with you to alleviate those anxious or fearful thoughts, to allow the process to be smooth and positive. This is done through a combination of personalised support from the teacher, home learning and the Calm Births syllabus.

So to look at that in a little more detail we can break it down into 3 sections: The Physical, The Practical and The Relaxation techniques.

The Physical

Being pregnant, being in labour and giving birth are all miraculous, amazing things that the body does for us, or sometimes that healthcare professionals help us to do in the instances where we need clinical help. All of these are huge physical undertakings and so much is happening to the body that it can feel frightening and overwhelming.

Therefore our aim in hypnobirthing (specifically in Calm Births classes) is to give you all the information you need to know about what is happening to the body at every step of the way. This means that you will feel fully informed, in control and prepared about what is going to happen and there will be no surprises along the way. This reduction in fear or anxiety about the process makes a fundamental difference to how the body responds during the process itself.

With us you will also learn physical tips such as how to help the baby into the optimum position, how to avoid perineal damage during birth, or how to prepare for a planned C-Section if that is your journey.

The Practical

In much the same vein as The Physical, we know that the more you know about the process, the more prepared and calm you’ll feel, in turn affecting the actual birth.

And so we prepare you practically for birth, including what to pack in your hospital bag, how to get your body into labour, how to know when it’s labour, when to call the Midwife and what happens after you’ve had the baby.

The Relaxation Techniques

This is where the ‘hypno’ bit comes in - and it’s really nothing scary or ‘woo’ - it’s simply learning a really good way to relax whenever you want it. The scientific explanation of this is that you will train your brain to reach the Theta level whenever you want it to - the Theta is where our brain is at when we are just dozing in front of the TV, or engrossed in a film or book, or absorbed in a daydream. We are completely aware all of the time, but just feel really happily relaxed. Now wouldn’t it be great if you could feel that way whenever you wanted?! That’s what we teach you! So that leading up to the birth you will spend lots of time learning this and practising it (which is giving the baby some seriously calming times, which is why hypno babies are generally very chilled!) - then when you’re in labour you can just take yourself away to that lovely place whenever you want to, by yourself and sometimes with the help of your birthing partner.

There is so much more to it, but in a nutshell, that’s what hypnobirthing is! If you feel like it might be something for you, please do reach out, we’d love to help you x

Meet Clare Lowing, the Postnatal Doula.

2020 has been a ridiculous year for everyone, and for those who have had or are having lockdown babies it is particularly challenging. Gone are the support groups of new Mums that you would normally have, gone are the friends and families popping round and helping you out. I feel for you, it’s a tough time.

But there are people out there who are helping, such as the wonderful services offered by postnatal doulas. A postnatal doula is someone who will offer you personal support both practically and emotionally after the birth of your baby.

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Clare Lowing, a postnatal Doula with many years experience and this is what I learned:

1. Hi Clare, please do introduce yourself and tell us a little about you!

Hi Hannah, Thank you for inviting me to chat with you. I’m passionate about birth and parenting and work with parents to make their early experience of parenting as positive and peaceful as possible. I’m originally from this area and it’s lovely to be back; having met my future husband at Henley College, our youngest is now studying there herself. This year I’ve especially enjoyed walking and swimming in the beautiful countryside and time for myself has included sewing, baking or writing. A perfect day would include an outdoor swim, a home-cooked meal and a board game with my family.

2. How long have you worked in and around birth and parenting? What brought you to it?

When my first daughter was born I went to a Baby Massage course purely to meet other mums; I was in deepest rural Devon and felt pretty isolated. As an Aromatherapist I felt I knew about massage but I had lots to learn about babies and went on to train as an Infant Massage Instructor with the International Association of Infant Massage (IAIM). That was about 18 years ago and I still love running these courses now. The key is that the course is about more than the massage; it’s about creating a space for mums to get-together, share and support one another. (By the way, dads and partners are very welcome to the sessions). I find it genuinely rewarding and along the way I’ve taken courses in Breastfeeding support, become a Postnatal Doula and worked as an NCT Practitioner for 10 years. I also set up Exeter Homebirth Support Group, which is one of the things of which I’m most proud.

3. What is it that you aim to do for your clients?

I say that I know I’ve been successful when my clients don’t need me anymore! As a postnatal doula, I’m ‘mothering the mother’ and what that looks like depends on what each family is looking for. I’m often providing nurturing home-cooked meals, helping with feeding issues like positioning and attachment and demonstrating, either ways to wear a baby carrier or massage for colic relief. At other times, I am taking an older child for a walk with the dog so mum can have some alone time with the baby or I’m giving dad a shoulder massage. At the end of my time with a family they should feel connected to other new families and sources of support in their area, including my Mums Group or Walk and Talk.
I started running Walk and Talk groups with the aim of providing an environment where parents and parents-to-be would find it easier to make conversations and boost their mental health. I love nothing more than listening to parents give suggestions to other parents, I’ve learnt that each mum or dad is the expert on their baby. My role is often just about helping them realise that, rather than giving them lots of advice, although there is some of that too!

4. Who are your clients and at what point is it best for them to get in touch with you?

It’s great when pregnant women and their families get in touch whether it’s for antenatal information or because they are planning their ‘peaceful postpartum’. Today we often plan carefully for birth and neglect those important early days but by planning before the birth we can make the whole new parenting experience positive and relaxed. I’m also often contacted by new parents interested in Baby Massage and Walk and Talk and they could get in touch anytime. The ideal time to start offering massage is about six weeks and my courses welcome pre-crawling babies.

5. How do you feel that COVID has affected what you do and how you offer it? Is there more need for your services in this time?

I was blown away by the response when I created a closed community Facebook group for new and expectant parents back in March. Connecting with other parents was and is more important now than ever. I moved my services straight on to Zoom and haven’t looked back. It’s not the same as face to face but in Mums Group we learnt to use breakout rooms as the group grew and we started sharing songs and games for babies. I’ve found that there are even advantages to running Baby Massage courses on Zoom - if you don’t like singing or feel your baby is too noisy, just mute! Discreet feeding and nappy changing is easy. Plus there’s none of the stress involved in getting out of the house on time. So that the mums can meet face to face, we’re meeting for socially distanced walks, which works as there is a maximum of five families in the group. I do miss baking for new mums though and look forward to re-starting face to face groups in 2021.

6. What piece of advice would you like to give to pregnant Mums right now?

Trust your instincts, know your rights, gather your support group. Plan for the early days as much as for the birth; download my free Peaceful Postpartum Planner here!

7. And finally, how can people get in touch with you to find out more?T

hank you Hannah. People can have a look at my website: www.birthbabyparent.com or find me on Facebook www.facebook.com/birthbabyparent. I’m more than happy to chat through what support or course might work best.

Online HypnoBirthing Classes

A common problem that I hear when people are wanting to take the HypnoBirthing Course is that the logistics don't work for them. This can be due to babysitting issues, people often commute and work long hours or have other commitments on the days of the group courses. Sometimes people just feel more comfortable learning online in their own time. So, I have a solution!

For just £49 you can access an online version of the Calm Births course, learn at your own pace with lifetime access!

It’s as simple as clicking here and getting going straight away!